Ringtones Vs. The Music Industry

Ringtones find their humble beginnings in a practical place. Designed initially as a simple way to indicate an incoming call, in the same way that a household land line might, cell phone ringtones have, however, surpassed their domestic counterparts in variety, quality and in the amount of heated media coverage they have incited. Courting opinion of many colors from a wide base of social and business sectors, there is perhaps no group with more to say about these cell phone tunes than the original source of many of them: namely, the music industry.

Ringtones, in their original incarnation, were comprised of simple ditties based upon the traditional ringing sound that we associate with the now, perhaps, old fashioned domestic phone. As technology advanced and the audio capability of cell phones improved, ringtones seemed the ideal way to personalize any individual phone, and a new breed of tones and tunes proliferated, more sophisticated than before. It is with the advent of polyphonic ringtones that phones began to ring to the tune of the latest chart hit, and that an entire industry grew up around providing cell phone users with ringtone versions of this cutting edge music.

It was with the further development of the audio quality of cell phones that the line between ringtone and legitimate music became blurred, much to the dismay of many in the music industry. Many critics despaired when the infamous